


We Are Gathered Here Today

by zarabithia



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Pre-New 52
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-13
Updated: 2007-10-13
Packaged: 2019-05-23 04:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14926743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: The wedding would have been the perfect time for them to make up.





	We Are Gathered Here Today

Weddings were far from Dick's favorite thing in the world. Between the failed attempt at one with Kory and the one that had never gotten off the ground with Barbara, all any wedding could hope to achieve for Dick was a reminder of all he'd done wrong when it came to the women in his life.

But when the wedding invitation for Dinah and Ollie's ceremony came, his first thought - other than it would never last - was that he finally had a legitimate excuse to see Roy again, something he hadn't had since Roy had walked away from the Outsiders.

Dick ignored the pain in his heart that came with the knowledge that once upon a time, neither he nor Roy had needed an "excuse" to see each other.

But that had been a long time ago.

On the day of the wedding, Dick woke early, showered, and slipped on the pair of red boxers he knew Roy liked best underneath his Nightwing suit. He hated meeting Roy in costume - as _Nightwing_ instead of _Dick_ \- but maybe it was fitting, considering that so much of what had gone wrong between them had gone wrong in the first place because of the Mission and all the ways Dick had tried and failed to live up to it.

But today was not a day for regrets. Today was a day for fixing what he had broken, Dick reminded himself, placing his mouthwash back into the medicine cabinet next to the cologne that Roy had left behind in the old apartment. He'd never had the heart to throw it out, instead bringing it with him in the hopes that its owner would come back and claim it. In the meantime, it sat half full on the top shelf in his medicine cabinet.  Dick paused long enough to take a long sniff of the cologne and allowed himself to hope that the night would bring the opportunity to smell the scent up close and in person.

Upon arrival at the  cave, the scent of that same cologne reached him immediately, despite the crowds of superhero teams gathering to watch the beginning of the Dinah and Ollie train wreck. Like a good detective, Dick followed that scent until it led him to the even more familiar voice.

 _Roy's_ voice. The same voice that had shouted at him in anger and confusion, whispered to him in pleasure and hurt, laughed with him in joy and happiness, was now retelling a story of their Titan days to someone whose voice Dick didn't recognize. If it was embellished and not entirely the way that Dick remembered, that didn't matter. His stomach still flipped around itself and his knees did their best impersonation of taffy not because of the story, but because of the storyteller himself.

How foolish had he been to let that voice get away from him? Determination to fix that mistake secured itself in Dick's stomach as he quickened his step, pushing the seemingly never-ending crowd of people out of the way as gently as possible.

Try as he might, the sea kept flowing back together in front of him, growing impossibly more crowded the closer he got to Roy. He could finally see the Red Arrow suit - every bit as tight as it looked in papers - up close for the first time, and his mind worked over the ways he wanted to peel the material from Roy's body. Gods, was taunting the supervillains with the sex they could never get part of the JLA strategy these days? If so, Dick wasn't at all sure he wanted his boy on the team after all.

Not that he planned on telling Roy that. Not that he planned on telling Roy anything other than how proud he was of him, and how sorry he was for what he'd put them both through. Hopefully that, along with a well placed grovel or two, would earn him the right to toss his Nightwing costume on the floor next to Red Arrow's, the way he'd done with Arsenal's and Speedy's before it.

Dick was surprised to see Hawkgirl _(since when were the two of them so friendly?)_ as the receiving end of the Titan tale, but they _were_ in the League together, so perhaps it wasn't as strange as it seemed. Frustration welled in his throat, and with the back of Roy's head in plain sight beyond a distance that was two rows thick with people, Dick nearly called out Roy's name, so anxious was he to reach the other man.

But the name died on Dick's lips the minute he got close enough to see exactly why Roy had been too caught up to notice him.

_The hand on her arm. The head tilted towards her. Face focused directly on hers. Lips parted slightly even when he was silent in anticipation of -_

Dick stopped that thought short. Despite all the evidence in front of him, he wasn't ready to think of Roy with someone else.

No, because Dick knew the gentleness and warmth that hand was capable of giving. He knew the way those green eyes flashed gold with want and made anyone else in the room fall away. He knew the softness and strength those lips promised.

He knew because Roy'd once looked at Dick the way he was looking at Kendra.

Before Dick had thrown it away. Before he had willing _walked_ away from everything that Roy was currently offering to his new love. He'd had some silly justification, Dick was sure. Some reason had mattered then, but standing there in the room, the crowd of people no longer as thick as it had been before though not a soul had moved, Dick couldn't remember how anything could have been so important as to let go of the arm that had once held onto him the way Roy was holding onto Kendra.

Dick had no one to blame but himself, and he had no right to intrude upon the kind of life that Roy was building for himself without Dick.

At least, that's what Dick told himself as he moved backwards, willing the same crowd of people he'd cursed minutes before to hide him - from Roy, from himself, and from the woman who Dick hoped wouldn't be as quick to throw away the kind of devotion Roy Harper gave as he had been.

In short, Dick hoped Kendra treated the man he loved a lot better than he had.


End file.
